The second chamber of the Second Chamber of the Intellectual Property Court will probably be installed on 1 January 2013. In fact, on 26 November 2012, the Portuguese Bar Association commented on a draft ordinance concerning this matter (the issued opinion - only in Portuguese - can be found HERE).

Since its beginning  this Court has ran into trouble: while the intial law provided for the appointment of two IP judges, only one was appointed and, since then, she has been substituted (in any case, it should be noted that we are very well impressed with the judge currently in office - Dr. Helena Bolieiro).

The installation of the new chamber aims to deal with the huge amount of procedures that are pending in the court and it is, in our opinion, essential. In any case, and as results from the opinion issued by the Portuguese Bar Association, we agree that, instead, "it should be considered the creation (...) specialized intellectual property sections [throughout the courts in the country, instead of a single tribunal], as it has been demonstrated that the Intellectual Property Court, even with the 2nd chamber that is to be installed from 1 January 2013, will not give timely and appropriate response to [all the] civil matters relating to copyright, industrial property rights and company's names that may arise in relation to companies or between citizens living throughout the country".